Knife Making: Japanese Nakiri | Making New One After 2 Years
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More or less two years ago I made a nakiri just like this one:
I decided to re-make that exact same blade again to see how my knife making process has evolved over the past two years.
The nakiri I ended up making is thick, 50mm wide, 335mm overall with 195mm blade.
Blade is 1070 (aka C70) high carbon steel, differentially heat treated with edge hardness between 50 and 55 Rockwell. Handle is made of olive and walnut wood, with white (more like gray) felt liners and brass/mosaic pins of 8, 6 and 4mm in diameter.
Here are some of the videos where I go in more details about some of the tecniques used in this video:
Stabilizing wood:
Homemade Liners:
Homemade mosaic pins:
Dedicated hamon video:
And here are some of the videos about the tools I used:
Vacuum pump and chamber used to stabilize:
Hardening oven:
Tempering oven:
My lovely drill press:
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Index of operation and materials:
0:04 Mark template with spray paint and small magnets
0:25 Rough cut on metal cutting band saw
0:47 Refine profile on 2x72 belt grinder
1:16 Mark position of pin holes
1:46 Cernter punch
1:53 Drill pin holes. 4, 6 and 8mm
2:12 Make this transition nice and round with a rotary tool
2:27 Round off the spine, I like it more this way
2:30 Taxture done with various ball peen and other cross peen hammers
3:31 Preparation for hamon, see video linked above for more info
3:57 Muffler sealer paste
4:50 Hardened in warm vegetable oil
5:40 Tempered for two hours
5:56 File guide I made last week:
6:10 Grind single bevel, all done after heat treatment being carefull to not overheat to ensure straightness
7:00 Hand sand to 280 grit before etching
8:48 Etch in ferric chloride to reveal hamon
9:10 Buff the blade with fine steel whool to remove black oxidation from etch
9:40 Wood has been dried in oven over night
9:50 Check moisture content before stabilizing, see video above for more info
10:00 Pulling vacuum! Again, see the dedicated video for more info
10:42 Baking the stabilizing resin
11:07 Cut and grind scales to desired angle
11:40 White felt liners, check the video above for more info
13:00 Hadnle stack glue up with epoxy resin
14:03 Cut scales to size
14:40 Drill pin holes, ca glue used instead of clamps, works well with a piece of tape between scales and tang. I’ve seen someone do this here on youtube, can’t remember who. If you know let me know and I’ll add it here!
15:30 Mosaic pins, detailed video linked above
17:00 Final glue up with slow setting epoxy resin
17:30 Epoxy squeezout cleaned with nitro solvent
17:44 Cut off excess pin
17:55 Grind off excess material with 2x27 grinder and a fresh 40grit belt
18:15 Hand finishing the handle
18:55 Boiled linseed oil as finish
19:16 Microbevel added with MadEdge Pro
19:25 Stropping the edge with leather and fine polishing compound.
Thanks a lot for watching, I hope you liked the video!
Suggestions and comments are welcome.
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